AC. They Scalped and Burned His Wife: The Indian Slayer of Middle Pennsylvania, Captain Jack, 1755

They Scalped and Burned His Wife: The Indian Slayer of Middle Pennsylvania, Captain Jack, 1755

June, 1755. General Braddock is preparing to march into Indian territory near modern-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in an orderly European style. The 60-year-old Braddock is warned that the French and their Indian allies do not fight wars in the same way that they do in Europe. He is recommended to allow a group known as Captain Jack’s Rangers to work as scouts for the British Army and to give them free reign to fight the French Indians on their own ground and in their own style. However, the haughty and prideful

Braddock says that he does not need these Rangers and they would be left behind when Braddock marched to his defeat 1 month later. In this episode, we will hear about this mysterious man known as Captain Jack or the Black Ranger. Like some other bordermen of his time, he had been done severely wrong by the Indians and he took a vow for the rest of his life to slay as many Indians as possible.

We will be reading from this book, Our Western Border. This book was published by Charles McKnight all the way back in 1902. So, here is the story of a man known as Captain Jack who around 1750 became the Black Ranger or the Indian Slayer of Middle Pennsylvania. About this period, there flourished along the Pennsylvania border, at that time scarce extending much beyond the Susquehanna, a notable character by the name of Captain Jack who was almost as much famed as his Indian namesake of Modoc notoriety has lately become.

Although there is much of legend and mystery connected about the Juniata Valley Jack, this much is certain that there was a bold hunter and Indian killer known all along the Pennsylvania border from the upper Susquehanna down to the Potomac by that name. In Hazard’s Register, there is frequent mention of him.

Colonel Armstrong in his reports of his expedition against Captain Jacobs of the Delaware village of Kittanning calls him on account of his swarthy visage, the half-Indian. His monument can now be seen at Chambersburg with the following inscription, “Colonel Patrick Jack, an officer of the colonial and revolutionary wars, died January 25th, 1821, aged 91 years.

” Colonel George Croghan, who while Braddock was preparing for his march, was engaged in beating up a number of Indian scouts, etc., to serve as guides, distinctly states that Jack was at the head of a body of bold hunter rangers, skilled in woodcraft, expert in Indian fighting, clad like their leader in Indian attire, and offered them to Braddock, provided they were allowed to dress, march, and fight as they pleased, and not to be subject to the strict regulations of a soldier’s camp.

“They are well armed,” said Croghan, “and are equally regardless of heat or cold. They require no shelter for the night, and ask no pay.” This, of course, could not be permitted by such a strict and self-reliant martinet as Braddock, and the rangers were suffered to depart. It is idle now to speculate what might have been the result of the British expedition had these scouts, and a larger body of fighting Indians been allowed to accompany, or rather proceed Braddock’s army.

Judging, however, from the late’s invaluable services of the Warm Spring Indians in tracking the Modocs to their lairs, beating up their fastnesses in the lava beds, and bringing them to bay in such manner that nothing was left but surrender, it is certainly safe to assume that these Pennsylvania rangers and Indians would have performed the same offices for Braddock, and rendered wholly impossible the disastrous defeat which followed.

Captain Jack’s history is shrouded in mystery, but it is the current tradition in middle Pennsylvania that he was a frontier settler, and that returning one evening from a long day’s chase, he He his cabin a heap of smoldering ruins and the blackened corpses of his murdered family scattered around.

From that time he became a rancorous Indian hater and slayer. In 1753, he held a sort of roving commission from Governor Hamilton, his home being in the Juniata Valley, going under the names of the Black Rifle, the Black Hunter, and the Wild Hunter of the Juniata. It is thought by some that Jack’s Mountain in Pennsylvania was called after him, but this we think is a mistake.

It as well as Jack Narrows having taken their name from the fact which caused a great deal of excitement at the time of the atrocious murder in 1744 of a noted Indian trader named Jack Armstrong together with his two servants Smith and Woodward by a Delaware chief called Musamelon. In Jones’ Juniata Valley, we find a lengthy account of Captain Jack.

He makes him a hunter living on the Juniata near a beautiful spring having a mystery about him which no one ever succeeded in fathoming. He is described by Jones as a man of Herculean proportions with an extremely swarthy complexion and as a relentless Indian tracker and killer. The settlers about Augwick, now Shirleysburg in Huntington County, Pennsylvania, as well as those in Path Valley and along the Juniata frequently found dead Indians, some in a state of partial decay and others with their flesh stripped by the bald eagles on the

spot where Jack’s rifle had laid them low. On one occasion, writes Jones, Captain Jack had concealed himself in the woods by the side of the Augwick path where he lay in wait for a stray Indian. Presently, a painted warrior with a red feather waving from his head and his body bedizened with gewgaws recently purchased from a trader came down the path.

A crack from Captain Jack’s rifle and the Indian bounded into the air and fell dead without a groan. It appears that three others were in company but had tarried at a spring, who, on hearing the discharge of a rifle, under the impression that their companion had shot a bear, gave a loud whoop. Captain Jack immediately loaded, and when the Indians came up to the dead body, Jack again shot and killed a second one.

The Indians then rushed into the thickets, and one of them getting a glimpse of Jack, shot at him, but missed. The wild hunter, seeing that the chances were desperate, jumped out and engaged in a hand-to-hand encounter, the fourth Indian being only armed with a tomahawk. He soon dispatched the third one by beating his brains out with a rifle, but the fourth one, an athletic fellow, grappled, and a long and bloody fight with knives followed, and only ceased when both were exhausted by loss of blood. The Indian managed to get away,

and left the black hunter the victor of the field. Weak and faint as Jack was, he scalped the three Indians, and managed to work his way to the settlements where his wounds, consisting of eight or 10 stabs, were dressed. “It is said,” continues Jones, “that one night the family of an Irishman named Moore, residing in Augwick, were suddenly awakened by the report of a gun.

On opening the door, they found a dead Indian lying upon the very threshold. By the feeble light which shone through the door, they discovered the dim outline of the wild hunter, who merely said, ‘I have saved your lives,’ and then plunged into the dark ravine and disappeared.” With an eye like the eagle, an aim that was unerring, daring intrepidity, and a constitution that could brave the heats of summer as well as the frost of winter, he roamed the valley like an uncaged tiger, the most formidable foe that ever crossed the red man’s path.

“Of the final end of Captain Jack,” concludes Jones, “we have nothing definite. One account says he went west, another that he died in 1772. It is said that his bones rest near the spring at the base of the mountain bearing his name, and this we are inclined to credit. The early settlers of the neighborhood believed that Captain Jack came down from the mountain every night at 12:00 to slake his thirst at his favorite spring.

And half a century ago we might readily have produced the affidavits of 20 respectable men who had seen the black hunter in the spirit roaming over the land that was once his in the flesh. The towering mountain 100 miles in length bearing his name will stand as an indestructible monument to his memory. So that was the story of this Indian slayer of middle Pennsylvania, Captain Jack, from this 1902 book by Charles McKnight, Our Western Border.

I am now going to read some more about Captain Jack from a book that was quoted within this story, History of the Juniata Valley. This book was published all the way back in 1889 by U. J. Jones. Here is what it says about Captain Jack. Among the first settlers in Aughwick Valley was Captain Jack, certainly one of the most noted characters of his day.

He flourished about Aughwick between 1750 and 1755, when with two or three companions he went to Juniata and built himself a cabin near a beautiful spring. His sole pursuit, it would appear, was hunting and fishing, by which he procured the means of subsistence for his family. There was a mystery about him which no person ever succeeded in fathoming, and even his companions never learned his history or his real name.

He was a man of almost Herculean proportions with extremely swarthy complexion. In fact, he was supposed by some to be a half-breed and by others a quadroon. Colonel Armstrong in a letter to the governor called him the half-Indian. The truth of it, however, is that he was a white man possessing a more than ordinary share of intelligence for a backwoodsman, but his early history is altogether shrouded in mystery.

It appears that in the summer of 1752, Captain Jack and his companions were on a fishing excursion. Returning late in the evening, Jack found his cabin in ruins, and his wife and two children murdered. From that moment, he became an altered man, quit the haunts of men, and roamed the woods alone, sleeping in caves, hollow logs, or wherever he could find a shelter.

The loss of his family no doubt crazed him for a time, as he did not appear among the settlers until the fall of 1753. In the interim, however, he was frequently seen, and we may add, frequently felt by the Indians, but he studiously avoided all intercourse with his fellow men. If we may judge of his subsequent career, there is every reason to believe that on the discovery of the wrongs done him by the Indians, he made a vow to devote the balance of his life to slaying Indians.

If he did, right faithfully was his vow kept, for his fame spread far and wide among the Indians, and many a one bit the dust by his trusty rifle and unerring aim. The settlers, then squatters, cared little about the loss of the Indians, since they deemed it right for Captain Jack to wreak his vengeance on any and every Indian whom chance could throw in his way.

And so little did they care about the proprietors knowing their whereabouts, that no report of the case was ever made to the government of this combat. Various were the plans and stratagems resorted to by the Indians to capture him, but they all proved unavailing. He fought them upon their own ground, with their own weapons, and against them adopted their own merciless and savage mode of warfare.

In stratagem, he was an adept, and in the skillful use of the rifle, his superior probably did not exist in his day or generation. These qualities not only made him a terror to the Indians, but made him famous among the settlers, who for their own protection formed a scout or company of rangers, and tendered to Captain Jack the command, which he accepted.

This company was uniformed like Indians with hunting shirts, leather leggings, and moccasins, and as they were not acting under the sanction of government, styled themselves Captain Jack’s hunters. All the hunting done, however, after securing game to supply their wants, was probably confined to hunting for the scalps of Indians.

And as it was a penal offense then to occupy the hunting grounds of the Juniata Valley, much more so to shed the blood of any of the Indians, it is not likely that the hunters ever furnished the Quaker proprietors with an official list of the killed and wounded. On one occasion, with his band, he followed a party of the marauding Indians to the Conococheague, and put them to rout.

This act reached the authorities in Philadelphia, and Governor Hamilton granted him a sort of irregular or roving commission to hold in check the unfriendly Indians at the frontier. With this authority, he routed the Indians from the Cove and several other places, and the general fear he inspired among them no doubt prevented a deal of mischief in the Juniata Valley.

Early in June, 1755, Captain Jack offered the services of himself and his band of hunters to government to accompany Braddock on his expedition against Fort Duquesne. Braddock had already accepted the services of a company of Indians under George Croghan, and as he wished to gain laurels for himself and his troops by achieving a victory over the French and Indians by open European fighting, his own selfishness prompted him to refuse the assistance of any more who adopted the skulking Indian mode of warfare.

He did not live, however, to discover his error. Hazard, in his Pennsylvania Register, in speaking of the non-acceptance of Captain Jack’s offer, says, “It was a great misfortune for Braddock that he neglected to secure the services of such an auxiliary. Very true, for such men as Jack’s hunters would never have suffered themselves to be fired upon by an ambuscaded enemy or an enemy hid away in a ravine.

They would not have marched over the hill with drums beating and colors flying in pride and pomp as if enjoying a victory not yet won, but they would have had their scouts out, the enemy and his position known, and the battle fought without any advantages on either side. And in such an event, it is more than probable that victory would have crowned the expedition.

” So, that’s it for this episode on the Black Hunter, Captain Jack. Men like him were needed in Braddock’s army, and if he and his rangers had been taken on by Braddock, the outcome of that battle and the course of the entire French and Indian War might have changed. Instead, the English suffered a terrible defeat and Braddock himself died, and the English would continue to suffer massacres and defeats for several years until they were finally able to turn the tide of war around 1759.

There is no record of what Captain Jack did during the rest of the French and Indian War, and there are disputes over what his true name was. At the beginning of this story from Our Western Border, he is identified as Colonel Patrick Jack, who died in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1821 at the age of 90. However, in the second book we read from, it says it is unclear what became of Captain Jack after around 1755, and that he either went west or may have died in the early 1770s.

It is plausible that his true identity was Patrick Jack, and that he simply started a family after this period from 1750 to 1755 after his first family was killed, and he gradually became less of a scout or ranger. He then served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War. Captain Jack’s first child listed on his Find a Grave website page was born in 1762.

So, it’s possible that he continued to roam the woods as a ranger and Indian slayer until around the end of the French and Indian War. And then he settled down and started another family. I will also post a link to this essay by Shirley A. Wagner from Mount Union School District called Captain Jack, Man or Myth in the description of this video.

This author casts doubt on whether Captain Jack ever even existed, which seems like something that is very popular among modern historians. If you are interested in reading something like that, then you can follow the link. Let us know what you think about this Indian slayer from middle Pennsylvania in the comments.

I will also post some links to other videos about similar Indian slayers that we have read about on this channel. Tom Quick operated around the same time as Captain Jack in eastern Pennsylvania near the border with New York. After his father was killed by Indians in 1756. And Lewis Wetzel operated in western Virginia during and after the United States Revolution after his father was killed by Indians around 1777.

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